The Minneapolis, Minn., golf course’s groundwater pumping permit is limited to 36.5 million gallons annually, but if it reduces its the rate from the current 242 million gallons annually, the surrounding neighborhood could face flooding issues and the golf course would be unplayable.
The future of Hiawatha Golf Course in Minneapolis, Minn., is uncertain as conflicts over how much water it can pump into Lake Hiawatha come to a head, the Minneapolis City Pages reported.
The golf course can stay in business by continuing to pump at least 242 million gallons of groundwater annually into Lake Hiawatha, even though the Park Board’s permit allots for only 36.5 million gallons per year, potentially incurring the wrath of the DNR. Or it can reduce the rate of pumping to 94 million gallons annually, enough to save neighborhood homes from flooding. Yet that wouldn’t be enough to expel all the water from the golf course, making it unplayable, the City Pages reported.
Hiawatha makes Park Commissioner Liz Wielinski knows the course that first opened in 1934 has become cherished by generations of blue-collar families. “And I understand how [the golf course] is really a major part of that community,” Wielinski said.
Unfortunately, “what the DNR has told us,” Wielinski is quick to note, “is that it won’t allow us to continue to pump that ridiculously large amount of water. At the same time, we can’t just entirely stop pumping the water, either. There are homes in the area that have to be thought about as well.”
C&RB reported on the conundrum in June 2016.
One idea that’s attracted attention is turning the site into a food forest. A petition to establish the “Hiawatha Food Forest” has garnered almost 3,000 signatures, the City Pages reported.
The Hiawatha Ecological Park and Food Forest would, according to its website, be surrounded “by a large park where almost everything is edible. Mixed-use trails meander past trees heavy with apples, pears, plums and cherries. Families enjoy blueberries, raspberries and hazelnuts while overlooking a playing field. Herb gardens, salad greens and wildflowers connect to art installations celebrating cultures and histories. Grape vines shade picnic tables while sunflowers stand proud next to play grounds.”
Moreover, it would serve as a foraging forest, with an open harvest policy that would “welcome everyone to harvest what they need. Community partnerships could ensure excess food goes to those who need it most.”
Of course, there are practical considerations. Would the forest be more a orchard than wild-grown? If it’s the former, orchards require a lot of maintenance, the City Pages reported.
“You have to remember, the golf course maintenance paid for itself in fees,” Wielinski said. “If you were to have like an orchard, the maintenance costs would be greater stress of the [Park Board’s] general fund.”
On the other hand, if the forest would be more like berries and other edibles growing wild and in thickets, “that would be a different type of thing where people are getting all scraped and cut up foraging,” she says, “you’d have to talk to the community [first] before you do any of these things.
“That’s because while they might like a well-maintained orchard, they might not like a bunch of raspberry thickets that look like the wild and people have to crawl through them.”
Whatever the Park Board decides, change will come slowly. If the Park Board decides the golf course’s days are over, nothing is going to happen before 2020, the City Pages reported.
Though the decision won’t be voted on until next month, the public gets one last opportunity to weigh in on June 21, the City Pages reported.
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